In the Aftermath
by Darkblood1089
Summary: A collection of one shot about what happened to all the other characters that we know after the Battle of Hogwarts.
1. Chapter 1

This will essentially be a series of oneshots into people's lives after the battle. Go figure.

Lavender

The water curled, salty-sweet around her ankles, waves breaking over her feet. She waded out over the water, hating the wolf within her, fighting it like the Gryffindor that she was, and many thought she shouldn't be. Just because she liked clothes.

She hated the wildness. The loss of her innocence. As she started to swim further out, saw the shadows beneath her, the shadows that haunted her life now. The scars on her back and neck pained her less now and the amber sheen on her brown eyes grew stronger. Her body was growing colder.

She was to far out to swim back now. So Lavender flipped over, onto her back. Gazing up at the sky, her mane of hair swirled around her. And slowly, she realised, that she was not so different from the wolf within her, inhabiting her body, especially at full moon. She did not hate it.

She was stubborn and the wolf did not give up. Now, all that was paining her was her heart. The man who never saw her, the man she loved. Dead.

As the girl, now woman, who was once known as Lavender Brown took her last breath, her eyes were a million miles away, locked on an image only she could see.

"Remus"

The name escaped like a sigh from her lips and she exhaled, releasing her last breath before she dived. And she dived as deep as she could, past seaweed and fish until she couldn't, but the animal within her pushed her, and as she died, she lived. For the man she loved, in heart, mind and soul.

fin


	2. Chapter 2

Hermione

Hermione was fine after the battle, physically anyway. But something in her had changed. Where before there was innocence and virtue and naivety, now there was darkness and desire. But she wouldn't, couldn't let herself slip into the darkness. She had seen Bellatrix, seen the insanity that the dark magic she used and loved so much had brought her. Besides, she was a heroine, the Lights' little Golden Girl. Where would she practice? On who? Could she stomach hurting someone else, even if she found a way? She had hurt, killed in the war, but only for a reason, never to just give in to the craving to kill. Hermione fought this all down in the years following the war, buried it within herself, and it would never see the light of day. Something else took its place.

To hide from herself, she went to Australia, to find her parents. She found them, in Canberra. They had decided that they liked it there, and didn't want to return to England, away from the new friends they had made. Hermione especially liked the chocolatier, Vianne, and her child, who lived next door to her parents. Hermione went back to the UK alone, and found herself a job.

She spent her days in the Department of Mysteries, studying magic and creating spells. But after she left her work one day, not that she ever really, did, no one did, after all, she went down the muggle road, to a muggle shop, and bought herself the fastest, sleekest motorbike she could find. She had learnt to ride in Australia, whilst with a muggle boyfriend who had had one and decided that before she left, she had to learn, so that regardless of whether or not she remembered him for who he was, she remembered a part of him when she could no longer see him. Maybe he would forget her, he hoped not, this magical, fiery woman who confused him in so many ways.

Painted in silver and black, she found a matching helmet and then spent what she considered to be an exorbitant amount of her monthly salary on some leathers. This would not be something that she would tell her parents about.

And it was this that she lived for, speeding along the motorway, mahogany hair pulled into a single, overly thick plait going straight down her back. The adrenaline, the sheer joy of the speed and the knowledge that she was racing something, her demons, herself, the other cars. It didn't matter what, just that she was.

She didn't tell Ron. He would have laughed. She left him out of her thoughts when she rode. He liked the fame that came from the war. She tried to escape it behind the anonymity of a helmet.

When Harry saw her for the first time, he was shocked, but he understood. He understood more than he wanted too, she thought privately. He had laughed then, and asked why she was so scared of brooms if she was willing to ride this death trap.

"Because it's not hundreds of feet off the ground, you imbecile!" she explained. And in his understanding and also his curiosity, he asked her for a ride. Just one he said. Just today. But one turned into two, into three, into thousands. She taught him to ride, and he bought his own bike. They rode together, every afternoon, always a different route, always together. The thrill of this, of it always being different and dangerous, was never lost.

But as the years wore on and she needed it more than ever, she grew worried. She forced herself back to the places they had stayed whilst on the run. The Forest of Dean. Malham. Godric's Hollow. The Highlands. Trying to remember, and yet trying with all her heart to forget. It never worked.

Hermione spent the rest of her life speeding through the world in the half dark between day and night, Harry by her side. She never slowed until she stopped and yet she never really managed to close the entrance to the dark pit inside her. She'd tried, oh she had tried, but when she could no longer get on her motorbike, when Harry was no longer there to drive her on his bike, she decided that maybe it was time to stop running from herself. She was old, and was still working at her first and only job. The others were either gone or in St Mungos, never to come out again. Maybe it was time for her to join them. And when she at last accepted her desperate ache for excitement and life, that you could get from dark magic, or danger, she stood as close to the Veil as she could and listened.

Eventually, one day, she went through. But she didn't just fall, no. That wasn't Hermione Granger's style. She took a running jump and leapt through, ready for rest on the other side, ready to stop running.


End file.
